Episode 628 - Chris Hayes
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what's happening it's mark maron this is wtf my podcast thank you for listening thank you for being with me during this interesting time in the world
Marc:Today, Chris Hayes is on the show.
Marc:Now, Chris Hayes is one of the smart guys.
Marc:He's solid.
Marc:His scholarship is solid.
Marc:His cultural criticism and political criticism, solid.
Marc:Bright dude.
Marc:What's he like as a person?
Marc:I don't fucking know.
Marc:I know more now because I talk to him.
Marc:It was interesting to talk to him because he's a journalist guy and he's an earnest dude, you know, and he means it.
Marc:He's a political commentator.
Marc:And as some of you know, I did my time doing a bit of political talk way back.
Marc:And I decided that was not for me to do because my passions lied elsewhere.
Marc:Well, maybe I should rephrase that.
Marc:My anger lied elsewhere.
Marc:It lied wherever I would lay it.
Marc:I don't want to divide.
Marc:I want to embrace and bring people together in their pain and insanity and make us know that we're all very similar and that our fears and frustrations and hopes, dreams and horrendous dark places are the same.
Marc:With very little variation where none of us are that profoundly unique or necessarily interesting in our fucking insanity and problems.
Marc:So why wedge the political acts in the middle of that?
Marc:I think if more people dealt with their personal problems and personal issues and really sort of owned up to them and sat in themselves comfortably.
Marc:We'd have a much more interesting and realistic political dialogue.
Marc:And that's where it ends for me today.
Marc:We'll stay in the trenches of self if you don't mind.
Marc:I'm going to be doing some international travel in Dublin, Ireland.
Marc:I'll be at Vicar Street on Wednesday, September 2nd.
Marc:On Thursday, September 3rd, I will be at the South Bank Center in London, England, as well as September 4th there again.
Marc:I hear tickets are selling well.
Marc:I haven't been there in years.
Marc:I've never been to Dublin.
Marc:I think I was there once at the airport.
Marc:uh leaving after being in kilkenny which was was okay not a great experience but i'm excited about dublin then on thursday october 15th i'll be at the state theater in sydney australia on october 16th i will be at the palace theater in melbourne australia and october 17th i will be in brisbane city hall in brisbane brisbane right australia
Marc:i'm looking forward to these trips i have not done uh england uh or australia in in years i was at the melbourne festival and it's just um it's gonna be fun to to be where i'm at now and to be there and who knows maybe it'll be like the most exciting international travel in my life i do tell you be honest with you between me and you once i get on the plane once i get to where i'm going once i get into a hotel room that i'm not really responsible for in some ways not that i'm going to do any damage but
Marc:There's a piece to it.
Marc:There's a piece to it.
Marc:And I'm looking for some peace of mind because I almost lost my fucking mind the other night.
Marc:If you don't mind me saying.
Marc:Yeah, I came unhinged a little bit.
Marc:And I think some of you saw it coming.
Marc:You know, over bullshit.
Marc:But this is just, it is what it is.
Marc:It's the way my brain works.
Marc:It's, you know, it's just the way my brain works.
Marc:I had the health panic.
Marc:So I went to the cardiologist.
Marc:And I tried to cajole him into believing that I was pretty sick, that my heart, my ticker was going.
Marc:But he did the similar test that I had the other doctor.
Marc:He said everything seems fine for now.
Marc:But he said we'll do a stress test.
Marc:We're going to do a cardiogram.
Marc:So I'm going to do that, not next week, but the week after.
Marc:I was going to do it next week because I was fueled by panic.
Marc:And I thought, like, you know, I'm a time bomb.
Marc:I'm a ticking time bomb.
Marc:I better go get this shit done because I know something he doesn't know, even though he didn't seem very stressed about it.
Marc:about the situation so here's what happened you want to know how I lost my mind I bought a car and the dude over there at Glendale Toyota Alejandro man he helps me out so we got the car they cleaned it up and I got here's what I got
Marc:I got a black Toyota Camry hybrid.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:I had a Camry and I just got a little nicer Camry.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because between you and I, I don't give a fuck about cars.
Marc:I just need like, I sold my car, the classic shit box, you know, baseline Camry that had nothing in it that I bought online without driving it in 2005.
Marc:Just ordered it online.
Marc:They drove it to my house.
Marc:I gave them a check and I've been driving that, you know, for the last hundred thousand miles, a little less.
Marc:I just don't care.
Marc:I don't want to have a car I care about.
Marc:So I sold that to Ryan Singer.
Marc:I gave him the Comedian Pal price.
Marc:Guy's out on the road.
Marc:He's hoofing it out there.
Marc:He's going town to town doing the business.
Marc:Driving across country.
Marc:That thing as a Toyota still got a lot of life on it.
Marc:Ryan's a good friend of mine.
Marc:I gave it to him for a grand.
Marc:Toyota Camry, 2006.
Marc:$95,000 and change on it.
Marc:Gave it to him for a grand because I know it's going to go to a good cause.
Marc:Ryan's fucking swinging those jokes out there in the middle of nowhere doing the fucking job.
Marc:And that's a comedian's car.
Marc:And a comedian needs it.
Marc:So there you go.
Marc:That's that story.
Marc:We'll see where that car takes Ryan Singer.
Marc:I'm going to interview him about where that car takes him and what happens in that car from here on out.
Marc:That'll be like a secondary series, a sub-series of the show.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I'm excited about my new car.
Marc:I'm driving it around.
Marc:You know, pick up the girl, pick up Sarah.
Marc:We drive it around.
Marc:I said, what do you think, baby?
Marc:She says, nice.
Marc:It's got the Bluetooth, got the whole business.
Marc:I don't know how to work anything in the car yet, but it's exciting.
Marc:So then, you know, nighttime starts to come.
Marc:And I drop Sarah off after I give her a little cruise in the car.
Marc:And I'm driving home.
Marc:I'm like, these headlights kind of suck.
Marc:And I get into my driving like, well, that's because there's no headlights at all.
Marc:The switch is on.
Marc:Headlight's not working.
Marc:What the fuck is this about?
Marc:So...
Marc:In that moment, this is the way my brain works.
Marc:It's like, who can I call right now to fucking lose my shit on over this new car I bought today that's got non-functioning headlights?
Marc:Do I start tweeting at Toyota?
Marc:I had to restrain a pen and tongue, as they say in the secret society.
Marc:But I tried to keep it together, but my brain's been going a little haywire lately because I think things are going too well for me.
Marc:So...
Marc:So I don't freak out.
Marc:Instead, I set my clock for 615.
Marc:I'm going to be the first on the service line because I just leased that car and I got a fucking beef and I'm going to lose my shit.
Marc:So I drive down to Toyota Glendale, seven in the morning.
Marc:I'm there.
Marc:I'm the first, like, fourth or fifth person there.
Marc:Met this dude, Mike, from Jersey.
Marc:We talked Jersey for a little while.
Marc:We hit it off.
Marc:I tell him about the headlights.
Marc:He's like, yeah, man, I don't think I've ever seen that before.
Marc:Then finally, the service manager comes in, older guy.
Marc:White haired dude.
Marc:Seemed like a nice guy.
Marc:Told him what was up.
Marc:He said, I never heard of that before.
Marc:And of course, I'm thinking, fuck, a unique electrical problem on my new fucking car.
Marc:Welcome to Lemonland, motherfucker.
Marc:That's what I said to myself inside.
Marc:But I didn't express those feelings outwardly.
Marc:I said, really?
Marc:Never seen this before?
Marc:So what's going on?
Marc:So I sit there and wait.
Marc:And I'm freaking out because I think like now it's just going to be a battle with this new car.
Marc:Boy, that new car buzz didn't last very long.
Marc:Then old dude, white haired dude, nice dude, comes into the waiting area and says, there's no bulbs.
Marc:There's no bulbs in the headlights.
Marc:And I'm like, what the fuck?
Marc:No bulbs?
Marc:How the fuck did that happen?
Marc:But it was probably the best case scenario because that means my electrical system wasn't fucked.
Marc:He's like, I don't know.
Marc:And I'm like, no bulbs.
Marc:That happened on the assembly line?
Marc:They just forgot to put the bulbs in?
Marc:I've never seen it.
Marc:It's a big deal over at the service area.
Marc:How the hell did this not have bulbs?
Marc:Maybe some kid or somebody lifted them when they were on the lot.
Marc:But then it became sort of like, I don't know if we got these bulbs.
Marc:I'm like, this is the Toyota place.
Marc:He said, well, if you wait till the sales guys come, maybe we can take them out of another car.
Marc:And then out of nowhere, this mystical service elf shows up.
Marc:This little guy goes, I got him.
Marc:And I'm like, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I don't know where he came from, but that's all he said.
Marc:He just waved a baggie, like a guy who just got his drugs.
Marc:Little baggie, I got him.
Marc:I'm like, dude, put those fuckers in.
Marc:So that worked out.
Marc:So now the bulbs are working.
Marc:That was a close one.
Marc:And now I'm happy about my car again.
Marc:But anyways, a lot of things were going on all at once, and my brain exploded, and I yelled a bit.
Marc:I tried to start a fight with my girlfriend, and I yelled at my manager, because there was too much coming in, and I had to travel, and I'm getting my driveway done, and everything was going to happen at once.
Marc:The deck, the driveway, there was going to be demo here, I got interviews next week, and I just...
Marc:Because I have no capacity anymore.
Marc:And I'm not sure I ever did to to see more than a day or two ahead.
Marc:And that means schedule.
Marc:That means everything.
Marc:It's like everything's a fucking surprise to me.
Marc:Like a goddamn child.
Marc:I'm like, oh, my God, I'm getting on a plane tomorrow.
Marc:So like I just short circuited.
Marc:I just short circuited.
Marc:And I started texting Brendan, who some of you know now.
Marc:I'd like to read that directly to you because if you have a question about how to handle a Marc Maron in your life, I was losing my mind and I didn't know where to put my frustration because I couldn't make a decision about something.
Marc:I'm just texting Brendan.
Marc:Just like, what the fuck am I going to do?
Marc:There's too much going on.
Marc:I don't know how I can handle the schedule.
Marc:Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Marc:I don't need to get into specifics.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:I sent like 20 texts just spinning down the fucking hole of self.
Marc:Like my brain was short circuiting because there was going to be work done on my house all at the same time that I got to do interviews and I got to travel.
Marc:And, you know, there was just a million.
Marc:After a certain point, everything starts to happen at the same frequency.
Marc:Like, hey, somebody just texted me and wants to go to lunch.
Marc:That's exactly the same as, you know, I have to fly to Australia.
Marc:They all come at me with the same intensity.
Marc:So at some point, I there was this text.
Marc:I said, maybe you don't understand what the fuck I'm dealing with here.
Marc:I texted that and he had not really responded to anything because it was I was in a flurry, a flurry of panic and anger just coming through in text form.
Marc:Maybe you don't understand what the fuck I'm dealing with here, I said.
Marc:And then a little text balloon goes, Brendan just texts back, call me if you're going to do this.
Marc:That stopped the fury.
Marc:That stopped the frenzy.
Marc:Then I called him, like, hey, man, okay, I'm sorry about all the texts.
Marc:I just don't know.
Marc:This is my fucking mind.
Marc:And he gave me a suggestion.
Marc:To move some things forward, to clear out time, to look at my calendar and see where I could possibly do the things that I just spontaneously let happen.
Marc:And I said, no, I can't.
Marc:I'm not going to be able to change that.
Marc:And everything was able to be changed.
Marc:And I did not have a stroke.
Marc:call me if you're going to do this see that's where that's where texting falls off is is that you know when the the excited kind of like you know i'm fucked uh flurry of texts happens and you just go you know what maybe this is something you should do you know with your with your you know call me and then uh it all went away and that's why uh we've worked together for so long so
Marc:Did I mention I saw my wildcat, scaredy cat, the one with the fucked up mouth, just popped a fucking skunk right in the head.
Marc:Just paw popped him right in the head.
Marc:Skunk was looking around.
Marc:They were both kind of waiting for food.
Marc:And fucking scaredy cat was just sitting there on the step of the deck being cool.
Marc:Fucking skunk is spinning around, sniffing the air, looking for food.
Marc:Got a little too close to scaredy cat.
Marc:Pop.
Marc:Boom, right in the nose.
Marc:Skunk didn't even know what to do.
Marc:He's like, am I going to spray this motherfucker?
Marc:Am I going to make some weird noises with my feet and jump around in a weird way to see if that has an effect?
Marc:Yeah, I'll try those.
Marc:Well, I'm not going to spray yet because it takes a lot to bounce back from that shit.
Marc:So I'll just do a little weird panic dance and see if that works.
Marc:Look at what my tail does, motherfucker.
Marc:Nothing, huh?
Marc:Scared he just held his ground.
Marc:Skunk freaked out.
Marc:Went away.
Marc:Then fed that cat.
Marc:That's a tough cat.
Marc:That cat don't give a fuck.
Marc:All right, let's see who Chris Hayes really is.
Marc:Or let's have a conversation with him.
Marc:You know, you get a sense of the guy.
Marc:You know, we're not going to talk like he talks on the TV show.
Marc:We're going to talk like a couple guys talking.
Marc:Maybe I should give him all his credit.
Marc:Chris Hayes has a show on MSNBC called All In with Chris Hayes, and that airs weeknights at 8 p.m.
Marc:on MSNBC.
Marc:Did I mention that twice?
Marc:Chris Hayes right now with me in the garage.
Marc:All right.
Marc:After I talked to the president, I know that choices were made, that he decided to do this show.
Marc:It wasn't a fluke.
Marc:But then when you're talking to a politician, people ask me if I was nervous, but...
Marc:I talked to politicians before.
Marc:So how do you get that guy to be a person and not get that front?
Marc:And I think just the nature of the intimacy of it made it a very different experience.
Marc:But he must have had an agenda on something.
Marc:I think he said it was to sort of reach out to people who were apolitical in a sense.
Guest:Yeah, I think they are very attuned to the fact that
Guest:There is this proliferation of channels by which people can be reached.
Guest:And in some ways, those are frontiers that have yet to be settled.
Guest:Right.
Guest:By other people.
Guest:And I think they're very smart about that.
Marc:They can sort of come around the side.
Guest:Yeah, that's exactly right.
Guest:Where it's like.
Guest:Oh, well, there's all these people that listen to this person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All these people that not only listen to this person, but I think in a very savvy way, like trust this person.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's a sort of vouching and validation that happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sometimes the best way to get your message out, quote unquote, is when you're not in a situation where you're explicitly.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And I think that was the weird, the feedback was really like, I think that a lot of people just kind of like stop giving a shit.
Marc:about you know him or what he had to say you know just in the general population people who are not necessarily politically minded or or keeping up had just sort of dismissed him as well as the president and that's that so i think that a lot of a lot of the feedback i got was people saying like i forgot how much i like that guy right yeah so he did something right that's right that's right and and and it that goes back to the point that the two of you made which is a a point that i think about a lot which is
Guest:We are capable of relating to all sorts of people and bonding all sorts of people and having affection, admiration for all sorts of people whose politics we don't share when we take the politics.
Guest:That's right.
Marc:You know, that was an important thing.
Marc:And it's one of the reasons why I stopped doing politics.
Marc:I mean, I don't know how you walk through the world on a day to day basis with, you know, 48 percent of the population.
Marc:That's that fucking guy.
Guest:Do you have to deal with that?
Guest:You know, it's only happened to me twice.
Guest:And I'm lucky enough that... Twice, that's it?
Guest:Out in the world?
Guest:Yeah, because... They don't watch.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:My particular level of the very specific strata of fame or notoriety I have is such that it is mostly only to the people...
Guest:who like what i do yeah as opposed to broadly to the people that would hate me right so i'm not walking around like michael like michael moore is sort of this like identifiable icon yeah yeah right for a certain kind of conservative right um so i just don't i don't attract that one time i was in new york once and my child had needed to be changed in a starbucks and was and she was wailing yeah and this guy was like start berating me about ruining the country really
Guest:and i was just like hey buddy i like i don't care and i take care of my kid that was it that was it and that's and the one a few other times people have in passing said things but i've never had like some you know confrontation you don't feel compelled to argue at every turn if somebody approaches you in the street i don't one of the things that i love the most when i first started being a journalist yeah
Guest:was the feeling, the relief, the unburdening of not being compelled to argue.
Guest:Like that all my job was to listen.
Guest:I would go and report on things.
Guest:I'd go to a evangelical college to convocation.
Guest:And it was just liberating to say, I'm not here to persuade these people that I have the right politics and I'm not here to convert anyone to my worldview.
Guest:I just wanna hear what, I'm just gonna listen.
Guest:And it's an amazing unburdening that happens when you're in a position where I don't feel any... It's not incumbent upon me to argue.
Guest:Well, but now it is.
Guest:Now it is.
Guest:I know.
Guest:What'd you do to yourself?
Marc:See what you did?
Marc:You sold out.
Marc:Now you gotta argue.
Guest:Well, let me say this, though.
Guest:We argue a lot, but I mean, I just spent...
Guest:I've spent four or five days here in California.
Guest:We're doing this show on the drought.
Guest:And, you know, I always spent all day with a Central Valley farmer.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Who is very different politics.
Marc:Can you get me up to speed on the drought?
Marc:Because I think I might water my yard once too many times a week.
Marc:Am I?
Marc:How much of the onus is on me, Chris?
Guest:What have you learned?
Guest:It's about 80% Marin is short of the line.
Guest:I figured.
Marc:I knew it.
Guest:The water authorities.
Marc:What are you finding?
Marc:Well, let's go back.
Marc:So when you were a journalist and you had a certain amount of anonymity other than a byline,
Marc:How did you get into that?
Marc:Let's start at the beginning in a logical way.
Marc:Where'd you grow up?
Marc:I grew up in the Bronx.
Marc:The Bronx.
Marc:What kind of family?
Marc:Working class?
Guest:Middle class?
Guest:It was a working class, middle class family.
Guest:It was in the Bronx in the 80s.
Guest:My mom is from the Bronx.
Guest:Her father had a mozzarella shop in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx.
Guest:On Arthur Avenue?
Guest:On Arthur Avenue.
Marc:A mozzarella shop.
Guest:Your grandfather.
Guest:My grandfather.
Guest:Made the good shit.
Guest:Exactly right.
Guest:Do you remember him?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He died when I was about seven, I think.
Guest:But yeah.
Guest:Do you remember the shop?
Guest:The shop closed before I was born.
Marc:But do you have like memories of Arthur Ave?
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:The place next to it was Borgatti's, which is across from the church, which is where they make fresh pasta.
Guest:We used to go to Arthur Avenue every weekend.
Guest:And the fresh pasta with the cornmeal dusting.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Isn't that amazing those things from childhood that are like defining?
Marc:Like I've only been to Arthur Avenue once.
Marc:It's just mind blowing because that shit, it just doesn't exist anywhere, man.
Marc:They're like out here or almost any other city.
Marc:There's only a few cities where you have real.
Marc:The reason why Italian food is good is there's Italians there.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember when we went to, you know, I grew up Arthur Avenue.
Guest:We go to the market and the market had, there was a stall where people bought live chickens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was like the butcher where it was like real butcher.
Marc:Taking apart the whole cow.
Guest:Oh, that's an animal.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Being.
Marc:No denying it.
Marc:Deconstructed.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And then I remember the first time when we went to, my family went to Italy and
Guest:you know, when I was in 17 or so.
Guest:And I was like completely familiar.
Guest:I was like, oh, this is like Arthur Avenue.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Does your mom speak Italian?
Guest:She doesn't, no.
Guest:Her folks did, but she does not.
Marc:So what'd your dad do?
Marc:But you're not all Italian.
Guest:So my dad grew up in Chicago and was a Jesuit seminarian.
Marc:He was going to be a priest.
Guest:Man of the cloth.
Guest:Seven years in the seminary.
Guest:Lived in Peru for a year.
Marc:Doing missionary work?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, like, in basically the poor, what are called the bariadas outside Lima.
Guest:Yeah, not missionary work.
Guest:The Jesuits are not, like, super... No, they just work out of a church.
Guest:Yeah, they just do a lot of, like, social justice work and sort of helping the poor and stuff like that.
Marc:So that's what he did?
Guest:He did that and then he came back and he ended up at Fordham, which is a Jesuit school to sort of finish his education.
Marc:Brendan went there.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Fordham looms large in my life because a lot of the people that would later form my parents' social circle came out of Fordham because it was all these...
Guest:kind of social justice lefty Catholics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so my dad and his cohort of seminarian friends rented an apartment near Arthur Avenue and Marion Avenue that was one floor up from the one my mom grew up in that she lived in.
Guest:And it was through that that they met.
Guest:And that he gave up the priesthood?
Guest:So the story officially always...
Guest:And my parents will listen to this.
Guest:The story officially always is that he had decided to leave before meeting my mom.
Guest:But, you know, my mom has told this story about when, you know, when they first started hanging out, like my dad had the collar.
Guest:Right.
Guest:She knew.
Guest:I mean...
Guest:Her mom, when it became clear there was something going on between them, was, I think, a bit scandalized in the beginning.
Guest:Because she had met this dude.
Guest:It was like, oh, the nice Jesuit priest upstairs who wears the collar.
Guest:And I was like, wait a second.
Yeah.
Marc:So the story has been somewhat perhaps mythologized to take the onus off of your mother.
Guest:I sometimes have my suspicions that that is the case.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:You know the truth is there, Chris.
Marc:Where's your journalistic integrity?
Marc:Can't you?
Marc:Push your mom a little bit.
Guest:I have not set them up for a grilling on this.
Guest:But yeah, then they met.
Guest:And my dad had already at that point, through sort of being in the Jesuits, been doing these community organizing in poor neighborhoods in the U.S., in Chicago.
Guest:Bronx and so when they you know he left the priesthood and he and his friend from the same Jesuit class started an organization the Bronx that was basically doing housing organizing against landlords my mom was a teacher and
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I so I grew up in the Bronx in the 80s at a time when my dad was doing community organizing.
Guest:And the Bronx was, you know, the Bronx in the 80s was like gnarly.
Guest:I mean, I did not grow up in, you know, the project.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or the South South Bronx.
Guest:We lived in this neighborhood in the Northwest Bronx.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was, you know, a standard kind of working class neighborhood neighborhood.
Yeah.
Guest:but you know, the, the world that my parents, friends who they're still very close to and are still this kind of world around me and my brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Um, these were all people that were kind of like engaged, like community organizers, community activists in the Bronx in the eighties, like doing really, you know, amazing work.
Marc:It's,
Marc:It's interesting, though, because as much as the Catholic Church gets demonized, and probably rightfully so, for a lot of nefarious bullshit with money and predators, which I think has been going on for centuries, I think people forget that there are a lot of the civil rights organizers.
Marc:There was always the charitable arm and the community arm of the Catholic Church has done a lot of good.
Guest:And that tradition is an amazing tradition.
Guest:I mean, the people that come out of the church with that kind of real godly commitment to the least of these.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you encounter those folks, like it is an amazing thing to encounter.
Marc:And those are your parents' friends.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, yes.
Guest:I mean, in some ways, I mean, I don't want to... They're not saints.
Marc:And they should be the first to admit that.
Guest:But they were... My dad and my mom and the people around them were all people that were... They were really doing the work.
Guest:It's like there was no glamour and there was no money in trying to save people from lead paint in the Bronx in 1985.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, you're just doing that because...
Guest:Isn't that interesting?
Guest:You want to see the world be a better place, and that's the work you're going to do.
Guest:And that's what you grew up around?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what did your mom do?
Guest:My mom was a teacher in the Bronx and then stayed home for about nine years with me and my brother and then went back into education where she worked for an arts nonprofit in the Bronx and did arts administration in the Bronx.
Marc:It's fascinating.
Marc:So you grew up in this weird environment of somewhat selfless activity.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, neither of my parents in the duration of my life ever worked a single day for a for-profit operation.
Guest:That's so anti-American.
Guest:Not a single day.
Guest:I mean, I just like... And also...
Guest:sort of no one none of their friends did either i mean everyone worked for either non-profits or civil servant you know the government my dad ended up going to the health department where he did you know he just retired actually where he did he worked in in harlem and yeah and other poor neighborhoods on public health stuff so and did you now like you know there's something about
Marc:Like, I don't know, like on a spiritual level, and I think this was something that's lost on a lot of people, that there is something about helping others that makes you feel good.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And it does make the world a better place.
Marc:But people have become very self-involved culturally now.
Marc:that sometimes I have a slight sense of panic at the disconnect between human beings.
Marc:But I've also found that, especially in New York City, and it's one of the only cities I've experienced it, is that if someone goes down on the street, if something happens on the street in New York, it's astounding how many people are like...
Marc:They're to help.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Someone will immediately take charge.
Guest:It's funny because people have the opposite view of New York.
Guest:There's like the famous Kitty Genovese murder.
Guest:The woman, she was murdered in this courtyard.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think it was Queens and she was screaming and no one helped.
Guest:And this was like this sort of iconic moment of like the shame of New York City where like no one helps anyone.
Guest:And my experience in New York is 100% the opposite.
Guest:Always.
Guest:Me too.
Guest:If someone's walking around with a map on the subway and they look like a little lost, it's like...
Marc:yeah balls to a flame of like you you need directions and then and when they walk away at the mat three people go oh fuck i don't i don't think i told her hey yeah yeah exactly it's absolutely no it's absolutely true like how many people i've given directions and two minutes later i'm like oh shit that's the wrong the fucking wrong train i gave him the wrong train
Marc:F is all the time.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Enjoy Coney Island.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Sorry.
Marc:It'd be good for you.
Marc:An adventure.
Marc:But no, but it's true.
Marc:So how did that mold you?
Marc:I mean, seeing this, what were the expectations out of you?
Marc:Were you brought up Catholic?
Marc:Yeah, we were brought up Catholic.
Marc:So your dad's a believer.
Guest:He is a believer.
Guest:Yeah, we went to church every Sunday.
Guest:I went to church every Sunday.
Guest:I went to CCD on Wednesdays and then on Sundays.
Marc:I don't even know what CCD is.
Guest:I don't even know what it stands for.
Guest:Sunday school, catechism.
Guest:Really?
Guest:okay all right you don't know what it stands for no come on chris you're the wizard i used to get out of uh you know school early on wednesdays and go over and then so yeah my brother and i both raised catholic um you know with the fear of hell you know we had a very we had catholicism like my father was raised in a catholic home where it was like
Guest:old school catholic right like his parents until the day they died went to church every morning they were incredibly devout yeah they were incredibly anti-abortion he's not italian your father no he's irish okay okay so there you go the two yeah exactly
Marc:But I guess also there's a practicality to coming from his generation of Catholics and somebody as dedicated to the work, the social work of Catholicism.
Marc:I think that when you live that life, you're a little more practical about putting the fear of God into your kids.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Like we did not grow up in a home where, you know, I did something and then was consumed by guilt that I was going to go to hell.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I think like, I think that's my, my parent, my dad's generation of Catholics.
Guest:That's their experience of the religion.
Guest:I mean, and I think it was incredibly, it turned so many off.
Guest:I mean, there's so many people, you know, the FARC fallen away Roman Catholic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Who were just completely scarred.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It just that, you know, at six or seven being urged to contemplate eternal torture and damnation because you took a piece of gum out of the drawer you shouldn't have.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which was a lot of people that generation's experience of Catholicism is still today.
Guest:I'm sure some.
Marc:Well, I think the family or the parents would display some of the disciplinary action onto the church.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:So, like, you know, it afforded them a little bit of freedom just to let the church terrify their children.
Guest:I think that's really true.
Guest:Or in the cases of the nuns.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Beat the shit out of the kids.
Guest:Yes, beat the crap out of them, and also the school discipline, right?
Guest:I mean, it's like these are all sort of tools in the tool chest for, like,
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Confining the behavior of children.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is there's like, do this because I said so.
Guest:And then there's like, do this because if you don't, you will burn in hell for generations of self-loathing, guilt ridden.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's screwed a lot of people up.
Guest:I mean, it's funny because I am no longer a believer.
Guest:And yet.
Guest:I'm both no longer a believer, and yet my feelings about the kind of Catholicism I got are largely positive and warm.
Marc:Do you know the day that that happened?
Marc:Yes, I do.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got to Brown University freshman year.
Marc:Brown.
Marc:What year did you graduate?
Marc:2001.
Guest:And I was committed to going to church.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And when you got to Brown?
Marc:When I got to Brown.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And this is, you know, when you're 18 or whatever, 19, like, you know, waking up early at Brown.
Guest:To go to church.
Marc:You're there with celebrity kids and legacies and smart liberals.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you needed you needed some sort of order.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it seems like.
Guest:Well, I think I wanted I think I had some sense that I that it was an interesting test of my faith that if I was going to do this while I was by myself.
Guest:And I remember going to early that fall.
Guest:I went to mass and the and the priest gave a homily about the passage in the gospel in which Jesus said.
Guest:what God has joined, let no man render or sunder.
Guest:And that is- I don't even know what that means.
Guest:It's about divorce, basically.
Guest:It's basically the sort of, it's the kind of theological basis of the church's objection to divorce.
Guest:And he just went on this long anti-divorce homily, and I was just like,
Guest:I'm out.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I just was like, this is... That's when Jesus left you?
Guest:I was just like, this is preposterous.
Guest:And I think that my response to him in that homily in that moment was less theological and more just like political or practical.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But what it meant was, I was just like, I got no time for this.
Guest:And then I just stopped going.
Guest:And then once I stopped going...
Guest:And then I started studying philosophy as the thing that I did all the time.
Guest:I just like, I just came to the belief that, you know, there is no God.
Marc:It was rational.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You broke it down.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't think that like, I don't say that in any sense of like,
Guest:That is the one like that.
Guest:That was the conclusion I came to.
Guest:But the conclusion was preceded by the ebbing of practice.
Guest:You know, I mean, I think there's like my point is that like all of these things about our belief systems are inextricably bound to our habits and practice and life world.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:It's a control thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it's the way we write.
Guest:It's the way we control the crazy amount of stimulus that pour into our life.
Marc:And also, it's just the sort of the repetition.
Marc:I think I think that, you know, a lot of religion is is like sort of encouraged OCD with ideology.
Marc:You know, like there's a repetition of ritual and whatnot that it kind of grounds you in something.
Marc:Because when you're untethered, it seems like you sort of used your brain to sort of tether you.
Marc:But a lot of people, you know, they don't want to execute that.
Marc:So they're just sort of like they keep the order going.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:I mean, I had a friend of mine who became very religious after being not that religious, who basically said that to me.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:I just need something to keep me angry.
Guest:Not only that, but that people do, and that he sort of now looks at secular folks as just adrift.
Marc:How do you even... Well, you got your iPhone now, and it takes up a lot of distractions.
Marc:I've been doing... Refresh, refresh, refresh.
Marc:I've been working on a bit of... I just started doing this bit of that, I don't know if it's my age or what, but if I set my phone down,
Marc:For a few minutes, I get an existential terror.
Marc:It's almost like when I set my phone down, it's like, I'm dying.
Marc:I'm dying.
Marc:Give me the phone.
Marc:Where's Twitter?
Guest:You can feel that.
Guest:It's physically in the chest in the same place that real panic attacks or anxiety starts.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that your heart is and that you should be okay.
Marc:I drive home sometimes.
Marc:I don't put the radio on.
Marc:Do you take time?
Marc:Because meditation is a practice, which I don't do unless I'm just in my car.
Marc:But just to feel silence and the tactile sensations of having your hand on a wheel and just knowing that the vessel you're occupying is temporary.
Marc:Maybe I'm going too far with it.
Marc:I should be thinking about other things.
Marc:But I feel it now.
Marc:I don't know how old you are.
Marc:But in your life, did you...
Marc:You did not have a spiritual craving or did you find a higher purpose?
Marc:I mean, were you looking for answers?
Guest:No, I think I'm a person whose sort of biological makeup, neurological makeup is disposed to anxiety.
Guest:Me too.
Marc:It's horrible sometimes.
Marc:I think it's getting a little worse.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Dread.
Dread.
Guest:Yeah, yes, dread.
Guest:Dread and nostalgia in this potent mix of like, I think- Explain that to me a little bit, the poetry of that.
Guest:The way that my anxiety has always manifested to me is just the keen awareness of the onrush of time towards permanent non-existence.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's not necessarily nostalgic unless you sort of engage.
Guest:No, but it can be in these specific moments where the nostalgia will rise up.
Marc:That's where I went to college.
Guest:Yes, and then it's like...
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:That kind of like tunnel feeling of like it's all passing, it's all passing, it's all passing.
Guest:And I also understand that getting back to this religion thing about how if I really did believe in an actual sense in an afterlife, like that would be massively mitigating.
Guest:Well, that's the whole, that's the big pitch.
Guest:That's the big pitch.
Guest:And like, it's like awesome.
Guest:Like if you believe that in your cells, like that's great.
Guest:Like I would love to feel that way.
Guest:I would love to not feel.
Marc:It's like having healthcare.
Yeah.
Marc:it's very similar eternal that's why canadians are sort of like you know kind of cool i mean they're not incredibly interesting all the time but they're there's some basic thing that they they relaxed about yeah well i i understand that and and and i i feel the anxiety and i i think after a certain point in your life it becomes like it's interesting that you know somebody that that turned back to religion because it for me it's like
Marc:Once you go through a rational period or you've turned your back on religion or you were never prone to a spiritual search or a need for a God to sort of come to one at 60 or 70 years old, it's almost sort of like I'm going to turn that part of my brain off.
Marc:I've had enough working the angles.
Marc:So now I'm just sort of like, yeah, there's a God and now I'm going to just relax.
Yeah.
Guest:I just wonder all the time about whether, like I find that process fascinating because I just, it's unclear to me whether you can will yourself to that or how that comes about.
Marc:The suspension of disbelief?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's crazy.
Marc:So how do you deal with your anxiety?
Marc:What do you just do?
Marc:Just overwork?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think focus on the things like I actually find there's some people who have anxiety that is exacerbated by having like a lot of tasks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And mine is in some ways the opposite, like having goals and projects.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is what.
Guest:I find is the most satisfying way, like the concreteness of, of, of embedding myself in the finishing of a task is I find like incredibly satisfying.
Guest:And so that's the show every day.
Guest:I gotta make a show every day.
Guest:That's longer term writing projects.
Guest:That's like that, like the projects, the projects, the projects, the projects to me is the thing that really like makes me feel, um,
Marc:relieved of that and do you find that like because a lot of this stuff you're writing about things outside of you i mean you know how much uh like of your you know your your heart and mind and your your personal you know sphere is is uh being avoided right like how much of your life is just specifically about avoiding the terror yeah
Guest:No, I mean, well, I think we all cope with it.
Guest:It's like a human condition, right?
Guest:So I think, you know, I have kids now.
Guest:How many?
Marc:I have two.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, so that's full time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, like, and that actually, like, I've been away from my family.
Guest:This is as long as I've been away from the kids.
Guest:We left on Friday a week.
Guest:It's going to end up being like nine, eight or nine days.
Guest:And it's a really fascinating thing about... Doing the FaceTime?
Guest:Doing the FaceTime.
Guest:Actually, what I do with my three-year-old is I send her these little dispatches that I record, and I text it to her, and then she texts me one back.
Guest:And I do these sort of quasi-news reports, where I'm like, oh, this is a helicopter that fights fires, and we're going to go up in that.
Guest:Oh, you do that?
Guest:Yeah, and then I send it to her, and she sends me questions back.
Marc:So you're actually doing a show for your child.
Guest:I'm doing a show for my child, exactly.
Guest:That's Chris Hayes, your dad.
Guest:Good evening from California.
Guest:I'm your dad.
Guest:I'm on location.
Marc:So what was the... Did you study philosophy?
Marc:Was that your major?
Guest:Yeah, that was my major.
Guest:In fact, it was philosophy of math and science.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Jesus.
Guest:I did advanced seductive logic and Gödel's proof.
Guest:But that's math.
Guest:It was math.
Guest:Yeah, it's math.
Marc:So you didn't dick around with Spinoza and whatnot?
No.
Guest:I did some of that too.
Guest:I took existentialism, I took epistemology and stuff like that, but I was specifically on the philosophy of math.
Guest:The logic track.
Guest:The logic track.
Marc:Yeah, the numbers don't add up, so that's clearly not true.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I remember I had this experience, this really insane experience where when you're moving apartments at some point, you know, and you're taking your, you know that, talk about like a nostalgia opportunity, right?
Guest:When you have to go through your books and like you're taking it off the shelf.
Marc:I'm surrounded by this shit.
Marc:There's shit I've gotten from college that I still think I'm going to read.
Marc:I still think I'm going to read some of this shit.
Marc:A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guitars.
Guest:Let's make a wager right now.
Marc:I did some underlining in there at one point.
Marc:Did you read that book?
Marc:You know those guys?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:What was that about?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:All right, all right.
Marc:I have no... Okay.
Marc:I'm never going to get to it.
Guest:But I had this experience where one of the books I took off was one of my deductive logic books from college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I open it up, and in the margins are these just furious, extensive notes, and it literally might as well have been written in Chinese.
Guest:Like, I could not believe that the person who wrote those notes was a version of me who understood any of this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it was so remote to me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was just like...
Guest:Yeah, it's weird, right?
Guest:Who was that person?
Guest:That was me, but I can't make sense of any of this anymore.
Marc:You were loading your brain up.
Marc:You were in it.
Marc:I was in it.
Marc:You were training.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:So what was the original idea?
Marc:What did you want to do with your life when you were in college?
Marc:I mean, I know you ended up the journalist and this guy that hosts a show and is fighting the good fight, but you must have been more selfish at some other point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:No, I really wanted to be a performer.
Guest:I wanted to be a theater.
Guest:I mean, I did a ton of theater.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like plays?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You were an actor guy?
Guest:I was a director, actor.
Guest:My friends wrote a musical I directed.
Guest:I did a solo show my senior year.
Guest:I acted.
Guest:I was in Three Sisters.
Guest:I wrote plays.
Guest:I wrote a lot.
Marc:You wrote plays?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How many?
Guest:Three or four, probably.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Three act?
Guest:Like one full three act.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Smaller ones of the one act solo show.
Guest:When are you going to get back to that?
Guest:I want to, actually.
Guest:You do?
Guest:Yeah, I do.
Guest:I definitely, at some point, want to do theater again.
Marc:What would it take?
Marc:I mean, it seems like you have a mission.
Marc:So how does a guy like you just pull out to do some theater?
I don't know.
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:I mean, that's an unanswered question.
Guest:You know, I'm, did you do theater?
Marc:I wrote a couple of plays.
Guest:Yeah, I knew that.
Marc:But I didn't, you know, I was, you know, it was not the theater school, but I did, yeah, I acted and, you know, I directed and I was, you know.
Marc:I mean.
Marc:But I ended up pursuing that.
Marc:I didn't, you know, I didn't, you know, I tried to save the world route for a few years and I was like, I'm too selfish for this.
Yeah.
Guest:get back to talking about myself i mean the world is great and all but yeah yeah yeah i think um part of what i love best about the show now or doing the work i do is that it there's some part at which it feels like we make a play every day yeah like there's there's a bit of that like esprit de corps like we're making a show and right and the show has to come together and there's lights and tech and
Marc:You're kind of in show business.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, in a way we are.
Marc:It's all show business.
Marc:News, everything.
Marc:It's all shows.
Marc:There's a lot of things that you guys do up there.
Marc:Performing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I miss, yeah, I miss the theater.
Guest:I loved, it was.
Marc:Like, who are your guys?
Marc:Like, what are your, you know, who are your playwrights?
Guest:You know, Designated Mourner by Wallace Shawn?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I don't know if I've read it, but... It's really... That's like my sort of aesthetic, which is a sort of like long and ruminative monologue-driven kind of... I think I read The Fever.
Guest:Yes, right.
Guest:The Fever's great.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:The Fever's great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:um and then i also i like musicals a lot like this show that i'm on broadway which um is by a friend of mine hamilton um is you know it's about alexander hamilton this hip-hop musical about alexander hamilton and i you know there's i think there's two types of people in the world people who like love musicals and hate musicals basically it's like a very polarizing well i think the people that that hate musicals are afraid of themselves
Marc:I know there's a certain, I think, slightly macho posturing.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because I find that if I go to a musical, I don't seek them out.
Marc:But if I do, I'm just crying immediately.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Because people are singing.
Marc:It seems so vulnerable to me.
Guest:I could not agree more.
Guest:There is something that a musical can do.
Marc:at some switch it turns on emotionally that is for me nothing else reaches it's crazy i don't know why i don't seek them out you know what i mean because i feel like if i do i have to change my lifestyle i don't i don't know who i'd be anymore the kind of person yeah yeah i gotta be i'm the musical guy i'm gonna fan yeah i'm gonna see it again it's the 20th time he never gets old for me i'll be one of those guys
Guest:There are people like that.
Guest:I know.
Marc:I got a friend who's a really kind of like cranky, cantankerous dude who I've known for years.
Marc:And he literally will take it.
Marc:He lives in New Mexico where I grew up and he goes to he goes to New York once a year just to go to musicals.
Marc:It's like he gets it out of the system.
Marc:But well, that's interesting.
Marc:So you wrote a musical or you just directed one?
Guest:I directed a musical that my friends had written that we we did in college my junior year.
Marc:So how do you, when did your heart break and you decide that was not a practical future for you?
Guest:Well, I got out of college and my now wife and I moved to Chicago.
Guest:And I basically, for the first few years I was in Chicago.
Guest:Why Chicago?
Guest:She's from Chicago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I had family there.
Guest:My dad's from Chicago.
Marc:Oh yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was so much cheaper than New York.
Marc:And that was the big reason.
Marc:And it's interesting.
Marc:It's actually over time, I've sort of been to enough cities where I know the cities that, you know, actually kind of are authentic in their own thing.
Marc:I mean, there's a lot of cities that, you know, I don't want to piss off any cities, but like there's a few cities in America that are just sort of like this is, you know, a real deal kind of historic thing that still survives.
Marc:There's this organic nature to it.
Marc:And that's one of them, right?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:It's its own thing.
Guest:It's its own thing, and it's also, like, because of the cost of living relative to other sort of cultural meccas that people will go to is so low, what you get in Chicago is there was all these people in their 20s.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, you know, paying $250 a month in rent, $300 a month in rent, and then maybe waiting a table here or two, but then, like,
Guest:writing their show or doing comedy or painting or there was a lot of space for people to kind of pursue this kind of work or do really amazing like you know social justice work and all of that in some ways is kind of was facilitated by how much cheaper living right it was like New York in the 70s right exactly and
Marc:Like, yeah, there was a time where a lot of cities had that, but now it almost doesn't exist anymore.
Marc:Not even where it's supposed to exist.
Marc:And I think that's kind of diminished the arts communities in general.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:Like, if you can't have a bunch of poor creative people living somewhere, you know, six to a loft.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That is what facilitates.
Guest:I mean, when we think about these places that were that, you know, the Lower East Side in the 80s, they were that because it was cheap.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, it was all about space.
Marc:It's having the space to work and to create and to put on shows.
Marc:And you could do it.
Marc:Like, we got a loft.
Marc:And we're putting on a show.
Marc:It's not the same.
Guest:We put on, even when I was 27, 28, a buddy of mine who I'd gone to college with and done theater with, I just directed a solo show of his in the basement of the apartment that we had.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And we got like, I mean, this is not legal in any fire code sense, but we got like 100 people in there.
Marc:I think you're all right.
Marc:There's a statute of limitations.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Chicago Fire Department.
Marc:There's not going to be some right wing rag going, Hayes broke the fire code in Chicago.
Marc:Putting on his lefty plays.
Marc:Well, what do you think about that?
Marc:I mean, how do you feel when people talk about the National Endowment and about the necessity of arts and culture?
Marc:I mean, it seems to me that even creative people, like I even become condescending.
Marc:I did a stand-up show that they have once a month or something at this collective downtown here that do that kind of stuff, that do plays, that do provocative political stuff.
Marc:And I've seen that all...
Marc:We've seen it before, whatever it is, but this is another generation doing that.
Marc:But there's part of me that thinks like, you know, this has been done before.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But how does that nourish, you know, have you thought about that?
Marc:You know, what the arts actually do and what their place is?
Guest:I have.
Guest:I mean, my mom worked in the arts, was like an arts administrator and worked for this nonprofit in the arts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I think for me personally,
Guest:The most important training I got for my life was through the theater I did in high school and college.
Marc:Really?
Guest:How so?
Guest:A huge part of adult life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The two biggest things about adult life I find.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's presentation.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:occupying your space yeah standing in looking someone in the eyes delivering yeah to them yeah and collaboration like working with other people to make a thing work and we had this student-run theater at brown where we you know we controlled the building we got to and we would have these long meetings where we would decide who's gonna you know all these applications and we'd fight over who's gonna get the space for the next show
Guest:That was closer to adult life than any other thing I did in my four years at a great university.
Guest:Because it was just about the basic mechanics of group decision-making and collaboration.
Guest:And so I think that this is in some ways a practical argument for how important the arts are, but just I think every kid should have that awakened in them.
Marc:The creativity and the collaboration.
Guest:The creativity, the collaboration, the sense of like, I can make a thing with my friends.
Guest:And how do we do that?
Guest:And how do we skirt around conflict?
Guest:And how do you win an argument in the room?
Guest:Those were meetings.
Guest:That's all they were, which is like the least glamorous part of the arts.
Marc:But also, for me, the most instructive.
Marc:I understand what you're saying about collaboration and arts, but there's also something about...
Marc:The freedom of expression.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:On an individual basis.
Marc:I mean, I hear what you learned, but I always wonder, like, you know, people get so self-involved and not entitled, but everybody's expecting to win the lottery or be the next genius.
Marc:And there's not a lot of...
Guest:uh sort of attention paid to the the just the the act of of expressing that is yes i mean the difference between doing a thing because it will get recognition and doing a thing because that thing expresses something yeah fulfills you yeah it is so hard in a media landscape that is
Guest:in a very literal fashion built upon the endorphin rush of the ping of recognition.
Marc:And also it's very accessible.
Marc:I mean, there is the ping of recognition, but now anybody like there's something about the very design of content or what people call content is that and there's a freedom to it.
Marc:Like, hey, everybody can do their little thing and put it up on YouTube.
Marc:And with or without the expectation, you know, I think it's great that everyone has a voice and that they can show it.
Marc:But I mean, but, you know, some voices are better than others.
Marc:And that's just the way it is.
Marc:But there is a way to nourish a delusion around like, you know, putting things out in the world with these expectations.
Guest:yeah i mean i i think that i really early on when i first started doing journalism freelance writing when i was in chicago oh yeah let's get to that what what made you go like the arts well i would do them both i would i would do i was doing theater and i was doing some freelancing and and and this relates to this point in in that i would write articles and they would be in the alternative weekly yeah and and then like poof they'd be gone they'd be gone no internet yet
Guest:no internet yet yeah very early i mean there was internet but it was these were not articles so you had to walk down the street with somebody and get the free paper i would go the first day that i had a byline yeah it was in the winter and i got on the bus and wrote it south on clark avenue knowing that the van that dropped off the free paper came from downtown yeah and i went south until i hit a bookstore that i knew that was south enough to have it and i got them they were like fresh off the press i grabbed it and like saw my byline yeah i still remember that moment amazing moment it's
Guest:greatest but it's also what i came to realize is that it was going to be a path to misery for me if the way that i valued the work was the reaction it got because sometimes it would get a reaction sometimes it just like dissipated and so in the same way that you're saying you really realized that at that point i really did yeah as opposed to like you know that's not some sort of you didn't uh you know uh retrofit that no i realized in that moment now i have lost sight of that a million times since yeah
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I can hold that in my mind intellectually.
Marc:Well, that's a result of what you were talking about before, this weird endorphin, clickbait, immediate gratification media situation we have.
Marc:So you fall victim to that because now you're making a show that's out in the world and you're like, did it go viral?
Marc:Did anyone pick up on that?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did it get traction?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, so it's not- As opposed to like, was that, did we make a thing that was good?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:It's a good thing in the world that I'm proud of.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:As a thing, as a real thing.
Guest:Did we chip away?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:At the big problem.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:All right, so you start by doing, but also it's interesting in how you talk about theater,
Marc:is that that's also something that happens with community organizing.
Marc:That's also something that, like, you know, you were in a creative environment, but it sounds to me, you know, from what I've read about people who do it, specifically our president, and about what you're saying about your father, I mean, that whole undertaking of facilitating social change on that level is completely crazy in terms of, like, you know, sitting in a room full of people and making decisions.
Guest:Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And in both ways, sitting in a room full of people and making decisions and also...
Guest:You can't be looking for recognition or like victories every day.
Guest:No, I mean, most of the time you're just there and no one cares and you're not and you're losing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's that's fucking mind blowing to me.
Marc:And that's what people don't realize.
Marc:Like, you know, I pulled myself out of the political dialogue because I knew I was a fraud on some level in that.
Marc:Like, you know, yeah, I was angry.
Marc:I was concerned.
Marc:I'm a bright guy.
Marc:But, you know, bloviating about something or taking bits of news and going like, fuck the power.
Marc:You know, that's all fine.
Marc:But the way shit gets done is in rooms full of people that know they're losing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, making incremental growth for people that have nothing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's that's where it happens.
Marc:It's not some dude like, you know, pounding his hand, you know, on television.
Marc:Well, look, I don't hear.
Marc:And that wasn't a shot at you.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Oh, believe me.
Guest:I have no illusions about my relative efficacy compared to the people that do the kind of work you're talking about.
Guest:But I do think... Here's my feeling about sort of this in general, which is...
Guest:On a kickoff in a football team, all right?
Guest:The way a kick is covered is everyone has to stay in their lane and not all chase the ball.
Guest:Because if everyone chases the ball, you open up a huge gap for big returns.
Guest:And so there's this incredible impulse to chase the ball because you're like, the guy is there.
Guest:I want to go tackle him.
Guest:And you are coached.
Guest:Keep in your lane because if you chase, that opens up an opportunity for a big run back.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I sort of think about social change like people all have their lanes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like, so your lane... But is everyone happy in their lanes?
Guest:I don't know if they are, but I do think that like...
Guest:Not everyone's going to do the same thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And there's all sorts of different things people can do that actually do make the world a better place.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're writing for the alt paper in Chicago doing your plays.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Walking around in your heavy overcoat.
Marc:all three of those are exactly correct you you you stayed with the woman that you met back then yeah we've been together since we were 19 yeah so yeah that's that's something what happens what makes you leave behind uh you know the arts and and really start to what what did you decide your mission was
Guest:It was less a decision and more that it was easier to make a living and I was getting more traction writing as a journalist.
Guest:And I ended up getting a full-time job at a small lefty magazine called In These Times in Chicago.
Guest:I remember that magazine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's been around forever.
Guest:It's still around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:And I honestly think if someone had hired me to be the artistic director of a small theater company...
Marc:The missed opportunities, Chris.
Marc:I would have done that and... You'd still be there.
Marc:You'd be the old guy.
Guest:I would still be there.
Marc:He was here in 1980.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's been here for 20 years, that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Probably drinking a little.
Guest:Probably.
Guest:Very different.
Guest:No, I mean, I think I'd be happy doing that, too.
Guest:But so basically, I just started getting more traction.
Guest:And then and then also there was this era right around around sort of 2004, 2005, where the Internet starts to really that kind of like that moment, which you I'm sure remember, because that was sort of the same moment of kind of peak anti Bush mobilization, Air America, all this stuff.
Guest:the net roots, the blogosphere, at that moment then all of a sudden there's this way for the work I'm doing in Chicago to start finding this larger and larger audience through the internet.
Guest:And as I'm doing that work and writing it and they're getting a little recognition, that sort of sends me on the path towards doing what I'm doing now.
Marc:In terms of social responsibility, obviously you were wired because of your childhood and because of the models you had in your family and your old man and whatnot.
Marc:What was driving you?
Marc:What was the one thing that was sort of like outside of just basic lefty politics?
Marc:I mean, everybody sort of locks into one thing.
Marc:What was it that made you be like, you know, this has got to be fucking changed?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it's so a sense of sort of justice, injustice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Political commitment is so...
Guest:essential to who i am and how i was raised right it's almost impossible for me to like pull it out and look at it yeah and examine it you know it sure i it's a very visceral thing it's like i can't i can't imagine not feeling that way right about things right in the world what do you think is it like if you were to like to separate
Marc:The social conservatives, and to separate sort of the hate-mongering and the divide-and-conquer nature of right-wing media and everything else, there are conservatives that believe that their way is correct.
Guest:Oh, yeah, 100%.
Marc:And then there are lefties that believe that this is the way to life.
Marc:What is the primary difference in your mind when you strip away the bullshit?
Guest:That's, you know, I...
Marc:Because it seems like the righties, real conservatives are almost Darwinian, that if you can't survive or win and do it without government help, that, you know, you're just, what are you going to do?
Marc:You're just going to accept your lot in life.
Guest:I think there are competing values about what a good society and a good life are.
Guest:And again, this gets back to the sort of visceral sense.
Guest:I have a visceral sense of equality and fairness.
Guest:I don't have a visceral sense of, say, purity.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It doesn't scan to me.
Marc:Yeah, what would that indicate?
Guest:Purity.
Guest:The sanctity of marriage is like a pure institution that's being infected by gay marriage, for instance.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Well, those are social issues, but there are these economic issues that seem to... The difference in... Right.
Guest:Where like fairness... So, yeah, here's another example.
Guest:I have a sort of visceral attachment to fairness.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Whereas I just... That sort of visceral libertarian impulse of like...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Step off and get off my back.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:The place where politics really functions, which is like in the like flushed cheeks at a Thanksgiving dinner table that is related to but distinct from all these arguments we have.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's some moral intuitions that people have, whether they're born with them, whether they get them through life experience, that there are things that fire them morally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That are wrong and right.
Yeah.
Guest:And and conservatives liberals have different things that that kind of fire them up more.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and and it can be very hard.
Guest:Like it is.
Guest:hard to put myself in the shoes of people that viscerally feel angry about air regulations or, or there's, or, or angry about light bulb.
Guest:You know, this was like a pet cause for a while was changing the light, changing the light bulb to more energy efficiency.
Guest:And I, I can understand like, Oh, I can understand big interests that want to diffuse regulations, which a lot of that was just for them.
Marc:Well, they were just dragging angry people along.
Guest:But that's the thing is that that argument, that argument, you're going to have to change your light bulbs.
Guest:That captivated something in some segment of people.
Guest:And it is now impossible for me to make the empathic leap into the shoes of a person who is really angered by that.
Guest:I can think about it and I can analyze it.
Guest:I could report on and talk to people that feel that way.
Guest:But there are certain things that it's just very difficult to be like...
Marc:Of course, because they're angry about other things.
Marc:They've just been sparked by garbage.
Marc:These people are walking around feeling like they've been gypped and they didn't get theirs.
Marc:That whole thing is how do the Republican Party convince people to vote against their economic self-interest?
Marc:How do they do that?
Guest:Yeah, but I see...
Guest:I think I don't buy that argument in some ways.
Guest:Or what I want to do is I want to approach politics in which I grant people, regular people.
Guest:We're not talking about like corporations who are trying to, you know what I mean?
Guest:We're talking about like actual people who actually have politics, like people that walk around, have jobs, you know, whatever.
Guest:We're not talking about like, you know, a coal company that's like, we don't believe in EPA regulations.
Guest:I want to grant people that their beliefs have as much sort of like
Guest:Not legitimacy in their right, but integrity, that they are about what they say they are.
Marc:But you can't empathize with those people.
Guest:I just can't put myself into the mind space.
Guest:I can sort of try to understand and see where they're coming from.
Guest:But I just think there are certain irreducible moral instincts we have.
Marc:But I think most people have them and there's a belligerence that is that is that is stoked that like like I realized this the other day is that the democracy really depends.
Marc:Democracy functioning really depends on the number of people that are OK.
Marc:Not great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not shitty.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I'm OK.
Guest:You know that I got problems.
Guest:And so there's that that that Freud line about how the point of of of analysis is to turn like unsparing misery into ordinary unhappiness.
Guest:I think it's a line.
Marc:It's similar, right?
Marc:So I feel like even with gay marriage, even with the people that... It becomes the evolution of democracy or a culture.
Marc:The reason it's difficult is that people are stuck in this way of thinking.
Marc:But eventually, once something becomes legitimized legally or otherwise or culturally, those people that are like, that's fucking horrible.
Marc:But within...
Marc:A certain amount of time, they're like, no, I guess just the way it is now.
Marc:Like they they will accept it.
Marc:And it seems that the people on the margins who continue to push back against it are become a minority.
Marc:And that's the way democracy works is that people aren't necessarily happy with the collective decision, but eventually they suck it up and they live their fucking life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I think a lot of the light bulb stuff and that stuff is just people holding on to something that they feel is being like, you know, like this isn't what it used to be.
Guest:Well, that yes.
Guest:And that that feeling that that intuition, that thing that like it's not the way things used to be.
Guest:Right.
Guest:One of the fascinating things is that as you get older, it becomes easier to sympathize with that instinct.
Guest:Well, yeah, but also like the kind of like old man yells at cloud kids these days, get off my lawn.
Guest:That used to be a thing I had no subjective access to and is now a thing I have subjective access to.
Guest:Because I will feel that way sometimes about things that 14 year olds are doing and pictures they're taking of themselves and putting online.
Guest:I have this very conservative impulse, which is like...
Marc:We got to stop that.
Guest:Don't do that.
Guest:Don't do that.
Guest:In my day, we didn't do that.
Marc:I wonder what it really does.
Marc:But that type of nostalgia that we're talking about, and this used to be, the weird thing about it is it was far...
Marc:It was before anyone even having experience of it.
Marc:Whatever this used to be is, this normal way of living that was once America, is before my lifetime, really.
Marc:I'm 63.
Marc:So in 1963, I mean, that's not the whatever people.
Marc:Yeah, 1963 I was born.
Marc:Born in 1963.
Marc:You just said, I'm 63, and I was like, what the fuck?
Marc:But I think a lot of people are holding on to something they never even had experience of.
Marc:It's an idea.
Guest:But that's there's some, you know, I may be misquoting this, but there's some ancient tablets from like Sumeria that are about like, you know, the good old kids these days, basically.
Guest:I get that.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like there is this like eternal sense of as part of the human condition, like there was this thing before we came, this thing to which we will return.
Marc:But I think what the real threat to people like you and I, or maybe what I'm projecting onto you is that it's more than just kids these days, it is the deterioration of real community.
Marc:And it seems that, oddly, people that have less
Marc:have a tighter sense of community.
Marc:I think that if you talk about class issues, the one reason why whatever the lower class is survives is because, for better or for worse, their communities are much stronger.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think when you... There's this trade-off that happens as either societies get richer or people get richer in which...
Guest:people move around a lot more, right?
Guest:Like, the idea that, you know, I know people who have, you know, people my parents' age who have five kids who live in five different cities.
Guest:Like, that would have just been unthinkable.
Guest:Sure, stay in the neighborhood.
Guest:Like, that's insane, right?
Guest:And there's a trade-off there.
Guest:The trade-off is people move because they have opportunities and they have...
Guest:like different parts of the country.
Guest:And the thing they give up is, you know, we're all in the same neighborhood and grandma and grandpa are here and they'll watch you after school.
Guest:And that stuff is, you know, that's a tangible and real loss to, you know, to not have that.
Guest:Like I right now, like I live in New York City and my brother lives a mile and a half away.
Guest:My parents live, I live in Brooklyn.
Guest:My parents live in the Bronx.
Guest:I love having my, like, particularly when you've got kids and we go up to my folks' house on a weekend.
Guest:We have, like, my mom makes amazing Italian food.
Guest:And we just got a bigger car so we can give my brother a ride back from the Bronx down to Brooklyn.
Guest:Like, that is really, that's special.
Marc:Well, that's theoretically what it should be about, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what do you think, like, as a guy that's on the pulse of this and as someone who is out here reporting on the drought, literally, like, you know, because the tone of reporting and the tone of...
Marc:the way news is presented and just the media in general, that there's this almost kind of compulsive, predatory necessity to get things that capture people's imagination over news.
Marc:And there is a sense that we're just spiraling towards the end every day.
Marc:And I tend to believe that that might not necessarily be true.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I mean, basically, I would say bad news, good news.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Bad news is that like a this is a the Western United States is a dry place that exists because of unbelievably expensive, aggressive and remarkable water projects.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:OK.
Guest:As a general matter.
Guest:Like, there's not enough water here.
Marc:It was invented.
Guest:Yeah, but of course everything's invented, too.
Marc:Like, there's sometimes... No, but I mean, like, the city was set up.
Marc:It's what Chinatown's about.
Guest:Yeah, right, exactly.
Guest:We're going to divert water.
Guest:Yes, right.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So, the bad news is that, like, it's bad.
Guest:Like, it's literally the three driest years in the history of record-keeping of California.
Guest:Like, they've been keeping records since, you know, the mid-19th century.
Guest:Like, that's crazy.
Guest:It's bad.
Marc:And... All right, I'll water less.
Guest:The other bad thing...
Guest:The other bad thing is it will be more like this as we go into the future.
Guest:It will get drier and warmer because of the bigger climate change.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:That's just I mean, we can't be totally certain.
Guest:Climate models are are not certain, but everything suggests that's the case.
Guest:The good news is what's amazing is there's still actually a ton of waste in the system.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had a guy on last night.
Guest:We went to Central Valley.
Guest:We saw we saw this farmer who's drip irrigating.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Half of the farmers in California still to this day use flood irrigation.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There is 60 percent of the water that is used in in Los Angeles is basically treated wastewater that's flushed out to the sea.
Guest:because the idea of recycling that's so politically toxic, right?
Guest:See, this is the weird thing.
Guest:So there is still, so the good news is there is actually still a tremendous amount of waste in the system and there's tremendous innovations that can happen to just get more from less.
Marc:But this is these paradigm shifts that become impossible because of politically entrenched corporate interests who refuse to spend the money to make the changes necessary to service the better good for short-term profit.
Marc:Or just to keep the model going.
Guest:Or just, or in the case of water often, I mean, that might be true about sort of the agriculture reasons.
Guest:And the water, like, you know, the idea of taking wastewater, which is, you know, wastewater.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you can basically treat that to 100% purity, run it back through the system.
Guest:And people are, that's politically toxic.
Guest:And that's not corporate interests.
Guest:That's just people being like.
Marc:I don't want to drink shit.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You know, I talked to the mayor two days ago and he said, you know, it had been dubbed toilet to tap, which he's like doesn't work, but we call it showers to flowers.
Guest:And I was like, you're right.
Guest:Showers to flowers is better than toilet to tap.
Marc:Well, but that's one of those things.
Marc:I think that, you know, over time, if somebody would just have the courage to do it, people would eventually be like, you know, I thought at first I would taste it, but I don't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah, no, it's all right.
Marc:It's all right.
Marc:It's all right.
Guest:I know that you're exactly right.
Guest:And eventually the pressures of all this will produce that.
Guest:I mean that.
Marc:But in the bigger sense, like, you know, in talking about like that, that's a political problem on people's sort of sensibilities.
Marc:But like, what do you think is the great unraveling here?
Marc:And I know that's a longer discussion, you know, but like you to have a relatively corporate occupied government in the sense that, yeah, that it doesn't serve the people.
Marc:I mean, what?
Marc:Where are we headed towards a sort of such a divide between classes that it's going to just become a feudal state?
Marc:I mean, what do you think?
Guest:I am.
Guest:I have weirdly become I can be profoundly dispirited about the state of.
Guest:American democracy, particularly on this this issue, the concentration of wealth and the kind of feedback mechanism between the the economy and the political system.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Wealth gets concentrated.
Guest:Those people have more money.
Guest:They purchase more influence over the political system.
Guest:The political system acts in ways that are favorable to them that further increases their wealth.
Marc:It's a money laundering operation like loose.
Guest:Yeah, that's what I here's what I think.
Guest:The history of money in politics, particularly in America, and the history of American concentrations of wealth is that eventually some scandal and backlash happens.
Guest:And I think the Citizens United era has unleashed what will certainly end in tears.
Guest:What does that mean exactly?
Exactly.
Guest:I don't know what it's going to look like, but there's going to be some huge scandal.
Guest:There's going to be some huge scandal that involves some billionaire who funds some candidate and is obsessed with one little tiny loophole in the tax code.
Guest:And that loophole gets stuck into a bill and no one knows who did it.
Guest:And this guy gets a...
Guest:Right.
Guest:Billionary-dollar-year tax rebate.
Marc:I mean, I'm sort of crafting some sort of abstract... Yeah, well, this is what your big... This is your big... This is the hope?
Marc:This is where we find hope?
Marc:Is that a billionaire's tax whoop-hole?
Guest:No, the hope is that it will...
Guest:There is some level at which people will react in disgust.
Guest:And there is already a lot of disgust about the way that all this is concentrated.
Guest:But there's going to be I predict there will be a galvanizing scandal.
Guest:I mean, people forget Watergate, which was about a million different things, was fundamentally was a campaign finance scandal.
Guest:Yeah, it was about the committee to reelect the president.
Guest:It was about suitcases of cash.
Guest:It was about all this sort of unaccountable money and the quit.
Marc:Aren't you underestimating, though, in sort of an optimistic way, the cynicism and detachment of the population?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:But I do think that, like, there's going to be some... The system can't keep running like this without producing a truly shocking scandal.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's my prediction.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I think there will be a moment when that truly shocking scandal happens for a whole re-evaluation of the system that we've built.
Guest:Because right now we are...
Guest:The thing that we're running, the experiment we're running is insane.
Guest:The rules are completely unclear.
Guest:The FEC is totally deadlocked.
Guest:There are hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars that are going to slosh around this playing field that no one knows the rules for.
Guest:It's nuts.
Guest:We've never done it before.
Marc:Well, that's why the entire banking system collapsed.
Guest:That is exactly why the entire banking system collapsed, and we are basically running an analog of that with the campaign finance system now.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, I guess let's hope for that crisis.
Guest:Hope for crisis.
Guest:No, hope for not crisis, but hope for for a moment when the when the unsustainable ability of it becomes so evident that there is a sort of mass.
Marc:Yeah, it's that is a naked lunch.
Marc:The boroughs when it's it's the moment where where everyone sees what's at the end of every fork.
Marc:Yes, that's it.
Marc:Well, look, Chris, it was great talking to you.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And I wish you best of luck with your playwriting career and your return to the theater.
Marc:I want to do that.
Marc:I'm going to hold you to it.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The day Chris Hayes gives up.
Marc:In lieu of no crisis, I find it impossible to continue on.
Marc:And I'm going to return to the theater.
Marc:That's going to be a big day.
Marc:That's going to be a big day.
Marc:Thanks for talking.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Good guy, solid dude.
Marc:Heart's in the right place, that Chris Hayes.
Marc:I enjoyed talking to him.
Marc:Look, folks, go to wtfpod.com to get on the mailing list.
Marc:I'll send you an email every week.
Marc:Also get a little justcoffee.coop if you want.
Marc:Pow!
Marc:I just shit my pants.
Marc:Classic justcoffee.coop plug right there for you.
Marc:Haven't done one in a while.
Marc:I was drinking iced tea, but, you know, things change.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Things change.
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